


fears: heights, falling in love

by warandrunning



Category: Fallout (Video Games), Fallout 4
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-11-23
Updated: 2016-11-23
Packaged: 2018-09-01 20:08:54
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,257
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8636530
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/warandrunning/pseuds/warandrunning
Summary: Deacon likes to think he has good instincts about this kind of thing, so he follows his hunch and "asks around" after this girl who popped out of a long-dead Vault and started shaking up the Commonwealth like she owns the place. He's half in love before he's even met her (not that he'd ever admit it).





	

It’s hilarious, really, how easy it is to pretend to be Diamond City security. All he’s gotta do is grab a heavy swatter and strap on the weird padded getup (the grated mask smashes his sunglasses uncomfortably into his nose, but he’s Deacon, so of course he wears his glasses, and he’s Deacon, so of course he gives “100 percent” to his cover), and no one’s the wiser. Not even the actual security guys (no wonder the Institute’s nabbing people left and right, with idiots like these on watch).

It’s not like Deacon needs it to blend in here—the Great Green Jewel of the Commonwealth gets enough come-and-go that people won’t look twice at a stranger, and they especially won’t ask too many questions. So it’s his funny little joke to himself, ha-ha, buddy, you’re a real master of disguise.

He’s been in Diamond City a couple days, running intel on three levels: first, they’ve heard whispers that the mayor’s assistant is an Institute plant, so naturally the Railroad wants to check on that. Second, Piper Wright’s been eardrum-splittingly shrill with her conspiracy hawking lately, and she might be annoying as hell, but Des wants someone in her corner keeping an eye out. And third, everyone’s favorite out-and-proud synth detective is missing again and someone needs to figure out where he went. Just another glorious Tuesday in the Commonwealth, right?

So it’s fortune—no, destiny—when some wet-behind-the-ears Vault dweller comes crashing into the city and solves his second problem on accident, then volunteers for his third with the kind of selfish desperation Deacon can tell will get some real results.

(He solves the first problem on his own, in about a day. Don’t ask how; he just knows that girl is no synth.)

Satisfied with a job well (okay, technically one-third) done, Deacon’s happy to leave the dirty work to someone who clearly cares more. So he’s about ready to head back to HQ to report to Des—

And then she looks at him.

He’d be lying if he said he hated cliches. So here goes: Deacon hates cliches. They’re boring and overused, and there are so many more creative ways to get a point across.

But when she looks at him, he swears he feels his whole world shift. His axis tilts, and it centers on her, and just like that, he’s done for.

Here’s how it happens. He’s tucked in a dark corner, hidden away in the good shadows. But he lights a cigarette, and the Vaultie’s gaze is drawn by the flare, the match throwing flickering reflections on the lenses of both their glasses before Deacon can get a clear look at her. She’s ragged, like everyone in this apocalypse, hair tangled, face smeared with dirt. But her gaze is clear, bright, and guileless from behind her smudged lenses. She pins him with those wide hazel eyes, and it’s insane, he knows, but it’s like she can see straight through his shades and into his soul.

“Welcome to the, uh, Great Green Jewel. You’ll totally love it here.” (Real smooth, Deac.) He hopes it’s enough to get her to move along, but she’s still there, and then, God have mercy on his sorry soul, she smiles at him. It’s sparse, no teeth, even, just a quirk of her lips, but it’s plenty.

People don’t smile at each other in the Commonwealth. (At least, not in public, where everyone can see you.) And here she is, tossing out smiles like free candy, and like the sucker he is, he’s hooked. She has a story, and he’s going to dig it up, to take a page from Piper’s book.

So instead of going back to HQ, Deacon leaves a coded note at a dead drop (“Asst. not a synth. Starting new op, Project Wanderer,” he calls it on a hunch) and follows her.

Oh, she’s a party. Deacon knows better than to stick too close and risk blowing his cover, but the ripples she leaves in her wake let him pick up plenty. The dolled-up wannabe gangster dame he runs into outside Boston Common tells a tall tale about a synth, a reporter, and a stranger (it sounds like the beginning of a bad joke, and Deacon makes a mental note to spice it up for Drummer Boy and co. later) who sweet-talked Skinny Malone himself. And then she goes right back to Diamond City and takes on poor Travis Miles like he’s some kind of personal charity case. Vadim can’t talk this girl up enough; he sings praises of her silver tongue and iron fists, and presto-bango, Travis’s voice doesn’t shake on the air anymore.

She doesn’t take the same tack with Kellogg.

He should be horrified (and he is, for a minute, when he sees what’s left of the sorry bastard, but, really, he deserved what was coming to him), yet she trails destruction and good deeds in equal measure, like some kind of homicidal Robin Hood. There’s not a body alive in the Raider bar where she picked up that Irish chick, or the tower of Super Mutants she climbed for the dipshit radio man (except the strangely chatty Mutie Deacon hits up for info, who has nothing but nice to say about the “puny human”). In a couple busy months, the Commonwealth comes aglow with little strings of stories, like Christmas lights (“She brought my daughter new shoes;” “She helped get my brother off chems and shut down the pusher harassing us;” “She got us all the parts to repair our turret;” on and on and on).

By the time she comes careening into Goodneighbor, Deacon wishes he’d named his little mission “Project Hellraiser” instead. When she saunters through the front gate, shotgun cradled in her arms like a baby (bad simile, Deacon, you ass), he gets to lay his own eyes on her for the first time since Diamond City. She’s chopped her hair off, short, thick waves of it falling just above her chin, and she’s sporting a rakish new scar that cuts down the left side of her face. It’s still fresh, and he can see the sloppy stitchwork from across the quad, thick black crisscrosses of thread holding the jagged red edges of her cheek together. One last gift from Kellogg, no doubt.

She’s distracted: by Hancock’s little welcome stunt, the Brotherhood of Steel’s blimp Big-Brothering them all, the chunk of brain in her pocket, her missing son, her very broken nose, whatever, take your pick. So she doesn't notice him loitering in front of Kill or be Killed. It's better that way, Deacon tells himself—fun as it would be to practice his drifter character on her, if she recognized him now, it’d ruin all the frankly mind-blowing theatrics he has planned for later.

He knows the good folk at the Memory Den, so getting in a pod to play pretend while keeping an eye on her is easy enough. The hard part is the waiting. He probably could’ve rewatched his entire life (not that he’d want to, like, ever) by the time she trails Nick downstairs to Amari and then trudges back up, ashen and determined. Amari waits until her de facto patients leave, then leans over Deacon’s pod like she’s fiddling with its controls.

“What are you doing here?” she asks, voice muffled by the glass dome between them. “You know HQ visits make our people nervous.”

“Following a hunch,” Deacon says. “Tell me about your little pet project there. What’s she after?”

“The Vault dweller? Right now, she needs more firepower,” Amari suggests. “If she can get it from us, great. If not… A woman like her will find an alternative. You’re right to pursue her, but don’t wait too long.”

“I’m always right, Ames.” He winks at Amari over the rim of his sunglasses, earning an irritated snort.

“You’d better get out of here before someone gets suspicious. I’ll leave a full report on your Vault friend at the dead drop.”

Deacon loiters around Goodneighbor just long enough to nab Amari’s dish, and he listens to it on the way home. It’s a short jaunt back to HQ, and he walks quick—late-December cold is not his friend, and neither are Raiders—but he’s still got time to listen to the holotape twice and rehearse no fewer than three versions of his impending conversation with Desdemona.

(1. “Des, do we have any spare rocket launchers laying around? Also, all the Rad-X we have. All of it.”

2\. “Hey, you know that suit of power armor Tom’s been fixing up? I need to borrow it. For a friend.”

3\. “You don’t know it yet, but this kid’s gonna be the best thing that’s ever happened to us. I’ve got a good feeling.”)

None of them goes very well. Not that it matters—soon as Deacon slips in the back entrance, Drummer Boy’s on him, unceremoniously propping his wig on his head and muttering about gunfire in the tunnels and Desdemona and Glory guarding the door.

“What’s goin’ on?” Deacon asks, straightening his hair.

“Dunno,” Drum shrugs. “New player. Girl, Vault dweller, dark skin, glasses. Friends with Valentine.”

“Ah. Shit. Gotta go.”

He hears Glory’s minigun whirl to life as he rounds the corner, and Des is demanding to know who their new best friend is.

For her part, she’s doing surprisingly well with being half-blinded by a spotlight and having the business end of a minigun so hot it must be fresh out of the oven pointed at her. “You’re the Railroad?” she asks, looking Des square in the eye.

Desdemona’s eyes narrow. “I’m not one for repeating myself, but we’ll try this again. Who’s asking?”

“No one who’s not the Railroad would answer like that,” the woman advises carefully with a crooked smile. “I’m here to join up. I want to take down the Institute.”

Des looks at Deacon out of the corner of her eye. “Deacon. Your timing is… uncanny. You know who this is?”

“You don’t?” Deacon grins and spares a glance toward their guest of honor. She’s staring at him, her gaunt cheeks and hollow eye sockets more severe in the unforgiving spotlight. If the rest of her face wasn’t so disarmingly winsome, she’d look like a skeleton. “Your new friend here’s been making quite a splash out there. Killed Kellogg. Did some other crazy shit. You’d like her.”

The reproving look says it all: _This is what you’ve been doing for the past two months? She better be worth it._ Des grunts and turns back to the woman. “Well, Deacon’s vouching for you, so let’s see where this goes. I have to ask, though. What have you got against the Institute?”

“They killed my husband and kidnapped my baby.” Her bluntness holds its own kind of charm, honest and frank and unassuming.

“We’ve heard that story more than once,” Des says. A hand signal, low and discreet, tells Glory to lower her gun. It powers down, and Deacon can finally hear himself think in the sudden silence. “I’m sorry about your family. We’ll help you any way we can.”

“Great. When do we start?”

“Start? Oh, we don’t have the manpower to train a new agent right now. But if you really—”

“Des,” Deacon cuts in. If they don’t get her on their side now, they might not ever. And what a tragedy that would be.

“What is it, Deacon?” she sounds tired.

“Ask her the question.”

She looks tired. “Have it your way,” Des mutters with a sigh, and turns back to eye the woman. He can’t see Des’s face now, but he knows the look. Ramrod-straight spine, square shoulders, piercing eyes. The tired’s all gone, replaced with steely resolve. “Would you risk your life for your fellow man?” she asks, and pauses a beat. (She has this flawless sense of dramatic timing, and she doesn’t even try. Genius.) “Even if that man is a synth?”

“Yes.” Immediate. No context, no hesitation, no conditions. Deacon couldn’t be prouder. (It’s exhausting, being right all the time, but someone’s gotta take one for the team.)

Des’s head tilt in Deacon’s direction tells him: _Fine. You win. You can have her._ She clears her throat, then says, “Good. Talk to Deacon. He’ll show you the ropes and give you your first assignment.”

He can feel Des’s—and Glory’s, and he can’t decide which is scarier—eyes on the back of his neck as he saunters down the steps to meet the new kid.

“Sorry about the, uh, rough reception. When you tango with the Institute, you gotta be careful when someone new gets on the dance floor.”

She bats a hand. “No harm, no foul. I can step a mean _salida_.”

“If you know how to literally tango, you’ve got one up on all of us,” Deacon says with a surprised laugh. It’s rare to find folk who truly appreciate his pre-war jokes, but if anyone would, of course it’d be her.

“I can do all sorts of tangoing—both literal and metaphorical.” Her smile is warm and teasing. “So, Deacon, what’s our first song going to be?”

“First things first. We all have little code names to protect our identities from the Institute and various other baddies. What should we call you?”

Her smile changes, toothy and bright but somehow terrifying in a way that makes him want to wax philosophical on the duality of man. “I’m your Fixer.”

She’s their goddamn Christmas miracle, that’s what she is.


End file.
